Nihilumbra was one of the many indie titles showcased for Nintendo platforms at E3 this year and the folks over at Mii-gamer sat down with developer Beautiful Games to talk about their design process and more, here’s an excerpt of the interview:
7. Nihilumbra is your first game to be released on Nintendo platforms. Why did you decide to bring Nihilumbra over to the Wii U? What is your opinion on the Wii U? Is it a good platform?
Kevin: When we started developing Nihilumbra, the WiiU didn’t exist at all, but as soon as we saw it announced we thought that it was a great platform for our game, mainly because it’s mechanics. It would be really hard (if not impossible) to port Nihilumbra to a console with a typical controller, but with that touching interface… it was perfect.
Sometime later, in a convention, we met someone from Nintendo Europe and we showed him the game. “We think that this game would be great on a WiiU” we said, “Well, what can we do to make it happen?” he answered. Everything was really easy an natural after that.
I guess that I have two different subjective opinions about WiiU, as a game designer and as a gamer.
As a game designer, I would say that it’s absolutely great. I always say that it’s the best thing that happened to console hardware since they added joysticks to controllers. With it we can make games that weren’t possible before, we can introduce asymmetric local multiplayer because, for the very first time, we have two different screens and two different input modes at the same time in one console. Really, as a game designer, I am constantly having new ideas of games that were not possible before.
As a gamer, I would say that I am concerned about the same stuff that concerns everyone: The games. It seems that there are not too many great games right now. It’s impossible to predict the future, and I’m no analyst. Let’s just say that, if Nintendo manages to build a strong base of games, it will have everything it needs to be a great console.
You can check out the full interview here
(Thanks to Mike for the tip!)
Yoshi’s New Island has sold modestly well but it appears that Nintendo are looking to push it even harder in Japan when it launches there later this month. They’ve released a couple of short TV spots for the game, which you can check out below.
Today’s screenshot features Mii Quest’s Dark Emporer once again, as Sakurai explains a cool tie-in to the 3DS software:
Kirby Fighters Z and DeDeDe’s Drum Dash are coming to the 3DS eShop in Japan later this month. These titles are updated versions of the mini-games from Kirby Triple Deluxe that will be packaged separately, Kirby Fighters Z for 500 yen and DeDeDe’s Drum Dash for 750 yen a piece, with a number of changes and additions to both games. Kirby’s Fighters Z is getting the Bell and Beetle power-up along with additional stages, while Drum Dash has a number of new stages with more masks for DeDeDe to wear based on other characters in the series. Both titles are coming July 23rd to the Japanese 3DS eShop.
Okay, so I know that I teased that I’d be writing about a different game in the last column (which was posted five months ago, holy crap) but there’s a reason for that. Turns out that a game that’s essentially “Style Savvy but also a dating sim” isn’t all that unique when Nintendo ended up adding boyfriends to Style Savvy anyway. So instead I chose to write about one of my favourite Game Boy titles in celebration of the handheld’s 25th anniversary (which was three months ago, holy crap). Yep, that chunky handheld sure gave us plenty of timeless experiences like Link’s Awakening, Mole Mania, and Revenge of the Gator’s title screen, but today I want to focus on a lesser-known classic for Nintendo’s monochromatic machine, an early Japanese dungeon crawler called Cave Noire published by Konami way back in 1991.
